


Dóm

by Ori_Cat



Category: Chronicles of Ancient Darkness - Michelle Paver
Genre: Delusions, F/M, Suicidal Thoughts, narrander pov warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 14:50:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21340009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: Mages are somewhat able to predict the future, but - how do they know it's theactualfuture?
Relationships: Narrander | The Walker/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Dóm

_Something terrible is going to happen,_ Narrander says. __

_ _He is sixteen summers old, and everything is wrong. The trees, the earth, the sunlight and the stars, breath and drink and food - he had not eaten in two days because that was wrong too, in a way he couldn’t explain but - _ _

_ _The ochre goes on his face like a bone-deep gash, because there’s nothing available for control - just has to be fast enough, more, better - _ _

_ _This is a mage’s job; to defend their people when ruin comes and the world is trying to devour them. Are mages allowed to give up? Because this is too big for him, he can’t - it will swallow him whole first and won’t flinch before ripping them all out too, leaving the Forest a burning wasteland where there truly isn’t any trees or earth or food. _ _

____  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ __ _

_Something terrible is going to happen,_ Narrander says. The sound of the waterfall rushing by a span below does its best to swallow the words; he does not know if he hopes she hears them or not. 

Dakru has not come closer than five paces, still at the edge of the outcrop. She, at least, is safe. 

Well. Safe from falling. Not from all the pain that is mounting the horizon like a sunrise, creeping inexorably closer with every heartbeat. Something awful. Something that will tear up the clans at their roots, will make him wish - 

_So what,_ Dakru asks carefully. _You think you shall pre-empt it, by taking your life now?_

Yes. No. If he had waited to think it would have been too late, so he hadn’t, because when there is no time to plan it is attempting to do so that is unwisdom, and so had just run, somehow to end up here hanging over the river, looking down down down at the white cauldron wishing there were more ways to escape life itself than just dying. _I -_

It would be better, than to see everything he loves ruined. If she is to hate him better she hate him for this than for not stopping it, for having known he was being stalked by misfortune and not even having taken the one step of removing himself from the equation - 

The drop sucks at his mind, in the pit of his stomach. 

_Come on,_ she says. _Whatever it is, I will help._

His laugh sounds much more like a sob. Really? Really, she thinks she’s strong enough to try and hold back, to try and save - 

Maybe, though. If she’s strong enough to love him. It’s a foolish thing upon which to take the risk, but he wants - he wants - 

It feels like it’s someone else, who steals his body and stumbles back down, because - it’s not agonizing, the way it would be if he did it. And he is deathlessly grateful to them, because by the time he takes it back they have placed it within Dakru’s reach and so she embraces him, pets his hair and his back. 

She smells like his mate. She smells like not dying. She - 

_I don’t deserve you,_ he tells the nape of her neck. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_Something terrible is going to happen,_ Narrander says. 

By this point, he knows it’s a lie. There is nothing terrible about the world, because every other time he has said that the world has continued, pulled itself up out of terror within a few days rather than collapsing into burning ruin. He only thinks so because he is split into two pieces - one that believes this, that sees everything spiralling into the void and beats its fists against the inside of his ribcage, gasping _run, run and don’t look back, until you have forgotten Dakru and Narik, everyone you ever loved, the trees and stars themselves - all will betray you. _

_All you will betray, when the storm breaks and you are its eye. Because you are not safe, in the same way an ice river is not - while you live you may crush them in your doom, because you are monstrous, you are -_

_\- broken,_ answers the other, the one that knows this a lie. _Like Roa’s leg, or Semo’s hand, but behind the eyes rather than in the bone. And just as these pain them, sometimes - does not Roa complain through the entire winter? - your eyes pain, sometimes, and in their complaint shut out the good._

That does not mean it does not exist. The evening is sleepy, and still sun-warm, there is laugher around other fires, and food and drink and the autumn burns beautiful across the lake. _These count,_ the other piece insists. _They have to count, or -_

Well, they must. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It is a lie. Nothing terrible is going to happen. 

Nothing terrible is going to happen. 

Nothing -


End file.
